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Hi, this might seem a bit of a silly question to those of you who've been camping forever, but how long do tents tend to last?

Mel

Older cotton and canvas tents will last indefinitely if cared for correctly, but modern synthetic tent material degrades with UV light.  It therefore depends upon how often they are used and how much UV they are subjected to.

I still have a couple of cotton tents, including one of the original Vango Force Tens, that are over thirty years old and are still ok.

We had this dilema when purchasing our new tent. Do pay pay the extra for the Polycotton version that would last longer if looked after correctly or not?

In the end we chose to go for the Vermont XL instead of the polycotton version mainly because in the last 4 years this will be our 3rd tent.

We camp all summer for at least 6 weeks whether it's in the Garden or else where. I'm one of those who likes to have more space every year or the children have grown so we need to accomodate them as they grow & every year there's always a new tent out that I 'fancy' the look of.

If I was to buy a good quality tent in the hope that it was to last for years & years it would probably end up being a waste of money for us. No doubt in a couple of years our children would want to camp in their own tent so ours would end up being too big for us or they'll be another reason as to why we want to change our current tent.

Plus one of our tents was ruined by a neighbour lighting a fire, the hot ashes fell on the tent and it was covered in holes  thankfully we were already thinking about getting another tent for the next year but even so! Luckily that was a real cheapy but I would have been really angry if it was an expensive tent!

So with that in mind we decided against the polycotton / cotton version.

Again, it depends on your needs / requirements.

Thanks for that.  6 years sounds reasonable.  I doubt we'll be camping much outside Scotland until the kids are bigger (now 2.5yrs and 9 weeks), so UV shouldn't be a massive problem.  Will have to watch out for mould though...

Mel